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DR. CHILTON The little girl laughed.

"Maybe. But what I mean is, that legs don't last—broken ones, you know—like lifelong invalids, same as Mrs. Snow has got. So yours won't last till doomsday at all. I should think you could be glad of that."

"Oh, I am," retorted the man grimly.

"And you didn't break but one. You can be glad 'twasn't two." Pollyanna was warming to her task.

"Of course! So fortunate," sniffed the man, with uplifted eyebrows; "looking at it from that standpoint, I suppose I might be glad I wasn't a centipede and didn't break fifty!"

Pollyanna chuckled.

"Oh, that's the best yet," she crowed. "I know what a centipede is; they've got lots of legs. And you can be glad—"

"Oh, of course," interrupted the man, sharply, all the old bitterness coming back to his voice; "I can be glad, too, for all the rest, I suppose—the nurse, and the doctor, and that confounded woman in the kitchen!"

"Why, yes, sir—only think how bad 'twould be if you didn't have them!"

"Well, I—eh?" he demanded sharply.

"Why, I say, only think how bad it would be if you didn't have 'em—and you lying here like this!" 139